Page 60 of Tiger on the Prowl

“I will,” Grace said.

Olivia ended the call and sniffled, wiping her tears.

Then she walked into her bedroom and started packing everything that she would need for the next few months. Leaving her cottage and not being able to see her family would be bittersweet. But the ruse was necessary so Smith wouldn’t realize that Jay and the other ex-CIA agents were onto him.

~ ~ ~

It was early morning, when Olivia got up and got ready to leave. She hadn’t slept well, even though she knew that Jay wasn’t far away and was watching her, ready to interfere, should Smith show his face unexpectedly.

An Uber took her to Dulles International Airport. The car dropped her at the departures level, and the driver lifted her two suitcases out of the trunk.

“Have a good flight,” he said.

“Thank you.” She took her suitcases and rolled them into the departure hall where the check-in counters for Japanese Airlines were busy processing passengers. She walked past the ticket counters and headed toward the escalators, following the signs for arrivals.

On the arrivals level of the airport, she rolled her suitcases toward the sign for ground transportation and walked through the first double doors leading outside. There, arriving passengers were waiting in line for taxis, airport and hotel shuttles, or waited for friends or an Uber to pick them up.

Olivia paved her way through the throng of passengers from an arriving flight, and steered toward the farthest end of the pick-up zone. There, she stopped. She’d memorized the license plate of the car that would pick her up. Perspiration was now collecting at her nape, both from the early morning muggy heat, as well as her nervousness.

An unassuming silver sedan stopped, and Olivia looked at the license plate. It matched the plate she’d memorized. The driver’s door opened, and a tall black man exited, and walked around the car. She looked him up and down. He was as tall as Jay, but he was heavy-set, at least eighty pounds heavier, and had grey hair and a round face.

“Ma’am?” he greeted her, and reached for her suitcases.

“Thank you,” she said with a smile, and watched him as he lifted her two suitcases into the trunk.

When he closed it, Olivia got into the backseat of the car, and placed her handbag and her computer bag on the bench next to her.

Moments later, the driver got back into the car, and they drove off.

“Time to switch off your cell phone,” he said with a deep Southern accent.

She powered down her phone. If Smith tracked it, he would think that she was getting on the plane. “Thanks for the reminder, sir.”

“Sir?” he asked with a chuckle. “So you’re not calling me by my name anymore? I guess next time I make love to you, I should ask you to call me sir.” Then he added, now in a different voice, “That might be fun.”

“Jay!”

“Hey, baby.”

“I didn’t recognize you at all.” He’d transformed himself totally.

“That was the point. Not that I think that Smith is having you followed. But Ace is keeping an eye on him nevertheless.”

She let out a sigh of relief. “I missed you last night.”

“I missed you too. But it was necessary.” He met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “We’ll make up for it tonight.”

The promise she read in his eyes made up for all the anxiety she’d experienced in the past two days.

After half an hour, Jay drove into a parking structure, where Yankee, disguised as a hospital orderly, was waiting for them with a white van with decals on its sides that indicated that this was a medical transport vehicle.

Yankee transferred her luggage to the white van, while Jay wiped down the interior and the doors of the silver sedan for fingerprints, before removing the license plates and taking them with him. Beneath the license plates were different ones that actually belonged to the car.

“Let’s go,” Yankee ordered, and Olivia sat in the back of the van with Jay, while Yankee drove.

Jay put his arms around Olivia and kissed her. “All went well. Smith has no idea that we played him. We know who he is now. And he does work for the CIA, just like we suspected.”

“I’m glad it worked. But what if Smith realizes that I never flew to Japan? Won’t he then suspect that this was just a ruse?”

“He won’t realize that you never arrived in Tokyo. Fox has everything in place to hack into the airline’s records to show that you boarded your flight and landed safely. He’ll even falsify the records of the Japanese authorities to show that you went through immigration and customs. Don’t worry. He’s good. For all intents and purposes you’re not living in the US anymore. And Smith has no reason to think otherwise.”

“That’ll piss him off,” Yankee said from the driver’s seat.

Olivia chuckled. “You guys are so good at what you do.”

Jay waggled his grey eyebrows. “Well, we are secret agents, you know, comes with the territory.”

Then he silenced her giggles with a kiss, and she didn’t object.